Scrolling and Navigation
Being able to view your code and move
your cursor to whatever line catches your eye is just as important as being able
to type your code as effortlessly as possible.
Scrolling
We've all used the mouse wheel to
scroll code and text within the editor. The following tips introduce a few new
keyboard shortcuts to improve your scrolling experience. Also, you may want to
know how to hide the scrollbars altogether. Hey, you never know when those few
extra pixels will come in handy.
Tip 1.13: How to use the mouse
wheel for scrolling in all directions
Did you know that you can press down on
the mouse wheel and have it act as a third button? For many applications that
have an editor, pressing the mouse wheel displays an icon indicating which
directions you can scroll in. Some require holding down the mouse wheel; others
don't.
In the editor, press the mouse wheel
just once and you'll see an icon indicating which directions you can scroll
in.
A couple of things to note:
The farther away the mouse is from the
directional icon, the faster the editor will scroll.
Pressing the primary mouse button stops
the scroll, but you have to press the button again to move the cursor to the
desired location.
Tip 1.14: How to jump to the top or
bottom of the current view in the editor without scrolling
Unlike pressing PgUp or PgDn, which
causes the editor to move either up or down a page, the following keyboard
shortcuts cause only the cursor to move:
Ctrl+PgUp jumps the cursor to the
top of the current editor view without moving the current view, unlike a
PgUp.
Ctrl+PgDn jumps the cursor to the
bottom of the current editor view without moving the current view, unlike a
PgDn.
If you find yourself using the
keyboard shortcuts just shown, you may find these additional shortcuts
helpful:
Ctrl+Shift+PgUp selects all the text
between the current cursor location (near the bottom of the screen in the
following illustration) and the top of the current editor view.
Ctrl+Shift+PgDn
selects all the text between the current cursor location and the bottom of the
current editor view.
One thing to note is that all four
commands jump the cursor straight up, meaning that it doesn't go to the
beginning of the line on that top line, but rather it goes as close as possible
to the current column position, as you saw in the preceding illustrations.
Tip 1.15: You can hide the vertical
and horizontal scroll bars in the editor
This tip truly embraces the spirit of "Did you know?"
Go to Tools–Options–Text Editor–General,
and under Display, you can uncheck the Vertical Scroll Bar and the Horizontal
Scroll Bar options.
Now your scroll bars are hiding from you.
And yes, you can still scroll both vertically and horizontally in this
state.
Navigating Within and Among
Editors
Navigating
code is another activity you do so frequently that any time you save greatly
adds up in the long run. The next tips get you to where you want to be, or back
to where you just were, as fast as possible.
Tip 1.16: How to navigate forward
and backward in the editor all because of go-back markers
In the standard toolbar, there are Navigate Backward and
Navigate Forward icons.
In the editor, the Navigate Backward
command is bound to Ctrl+Minus, and the Navigate Forward command is bound to
Ctrl+Shift+Minus. I find these commands most helpful when navigating around
multiple files or jumping through call stacks.
This concludes your "Basic Editor
Navigation 101" course. Now it is time for the "Advanced Editor Navigation 201"
course.
You may have noticed that the Navigate Backward button
additionally contains a drop-down list box. Displaying the items in this list
box shows you all the places that have a go-back marker. In other words, when
you hit the Navigate Backward button, you are going to the most recently visited
go-back marker.
If we've done our jobs right, the
go-back navigation should feel natural. But if you're like me, you like to know
the little ins and outs of how things work.
A go-back marker is dropped under the
following conditions:
An incremental search (including
reverse) leaves a go-back marker at the beginning of the search and another one
at the end.
A Go To Line action, like Ctrl+G, or a
mouse-click that moves the cursor 11 lines or more from the current position
drops a go-back marker at the new location.
A destructive action (like hitting
Backspace) after having moved the cursor to a new location drops a go-back
marker.
Doing a search, like Ctrl+F, drops a go-back
marker at the found location.
Opening a file drops a go-back marker
wherever the cursor was on the old file and drops another on the opened
file.
If you've found a condition where you'd
like to see a go-back marker dropped, let me know.
Tip 1.17: How to use Undo to jump
the cursor back to the last insertion point
In Tip 1.16,
you learned more than you ever wanted to know about go-back markers. For this
tip, you'll learn how insertion points are slightly different. They are similar
to the go-back markers, but they are applied anywhere you click the mouse or
jump the cursor to. The go-back marker "11 or more lines" rule doesn't
apply.
The option, which is shown in the next
illustration, can be found at Tools–Options–Text Editor–General.
To give it a try, just click somewhere,
then click somewhere else (or use Find or a Go To Line if you're using the
keyboard), and then click Undo. You'll move back to that previous
location.
Tip 1.18: How to reach the
navigation bar via the keyboard
At the very top of the editor and just
below the file tab channel, you'll find the navigation bar. The left combo box
lists objects, and the right one lists the selected object's members. These
combo boxes are very useful when you need to jump to various functions
throughout a large solution or you want to see what functions an object has.
To jump to the navigation bar
via the keyboard, press Ctrl+F2. This keyboard shortcut is bound to the Window.MoveToNavigationBar
command. To toggle between the Objects list and the Members list, press Tab or
Shift+Tab.
Additionally, you can hide (or
show) the navigation bar by going to Tools–Options–Text Editor–All
Languages–General and setting the Navigation Bar option to the desired setting.
Note that since this option is found in the All Languages pane, you can
customize it for any listed language under the Text Editor node.
Tip 1.19: How to split a window and
create new windows
There are two ways to split the current window:
From the Menu Bar, go to Window–Split.
Using the mouse, grab the
splitter control found directly above the document scrollbar, as shown in the
next illustration.
But the split command works only horizontally. If you need to
split vertically as illustrated in the following picture, use the Window.NewWindow command found
at Window–New Window. This will create the windows "Program.cs:1" and
"Program.cs:2." Then you can use the Window–New Vertical Tab Group command to
separate both files with a vertical divider.
Tip 1.20: You can use F6 to jump
between split panes in the editor
When I originally wrote and published
this tip, I had to laugh at the fact that there was a six-month gap between this
tip and Tip
1.19, which describes how to split the panes. The first
week I started the "Tip of the Day" series on my blog, I came to the harsh
reality that you actually have to write a tip of the day every single day. I was at a
conference during the first week of writing "Tip of the Day," so the initial
tips were those I could write the fastest. There was no rhyme or reason behind
the madness; hence, the six-month gap between Tip 1.19 and Tip
1.20. |
Once you have used the splitter to split
the editor window, you can use F6 to jump between the editor views.
Tip 1.21: How to enable URL
navigation within the editor
Under Tools–Options–Text Editor–All Languages–General,
there is the Enable Single-Click URL Navigation option. This option is enabled
by default for most editors. But, just in case you're not able to click on a
URL, here's where to go to verify the option is set.
Tip 1.22: How to use Ctrl+G without
the Go To Line dialog box popping up
This tip is pretty straightforward:
Pressing Ctrl+G will pop up the Go To Line dialog box.
But did you know there's a way to use
Ctrl+G without bringing up this dialog box?
Press Ctrl+D to go to the Find combo
box on the standard toolbar.
Press Ctrl+G. (Note: Do not press Enter; if you do, you'll search for the
number!)
Congrats! You've just navigated to the
line without the Go To Line window coming up.
You can try to navigate to line 0,
but Visual Studio will take you to line 1.
Word Wrap versus Virtual Space
The word wrap option wraps a long line of
text, displaying on a new line the text that doesn't fit on the first line. The
virtual space option allows you to have an insertion point anywhere on the file,
even beyond the end-of-line character.
Tip 1.23: How to enable word
wrap
The next image illustrates wrapping a
line of text onto the next line.
Go to Tools–Options–Text Editor–All
Languages–General, and check the Word Wrap option. When it is checked, you'll
also have the option to Show Visual Glyphs For Word Wrap.
You can customize the foreground color of
the visual glyph for a word wrap on the Tools–Options–Environment–Fonts And
Colors by modifying the Visible White Space item.
Tip 1.24: How to enable virtual
space
This tip is mutually exclusive
to the previously mentioned word wrap feature, Tip 1.23.
Try as you might, you won't be able to enable both word wrap and virtual space.
But if you figure out a way to do it, please don't hesitate to let me know how
you did it! |
In the following example, the
cursor is located in the virtual space. I have enabled the Visible White Space
option to illustrate there are no spaces after the Program class name.
I never use word wrap, and I made it through only a few
weeks using virtual space when I was testing it. Neither option was quite for
me. When I posted this tip, I asked readers to describe why they use these
options. I knew I would learn something
new. |
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